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"There is one final danger you must all be explicitly aware of," Aerion warned, his voice dropping into a grave register. "The amount of blood spilled on the plateau today was massive. The chaos, the screaming, and the sheer volume of magical energy released into the atmosphere... it is a beacon. There is a very high probability that the smell of slaughter will attract a dragon down from the peaks."
The officers stiffened, a cold dread washing over the newcomers.
"If a dragon descends upon the battlefield tomorrow, the standing order for the infantry is to completely ignore it," Aerion commanded ruthlessly. "You do not break formation to shoot at it. You do not scatter. You keep your shields locked against the Stormcloaks. I, and my personal retainers, will handle the beast. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Captain," the officers chorused, their voices tight.
"Are there any further questions or objections to the battle plan?" Aerion asked, looking around the table.
Every single officer shook their head, signaling their absolute agreement. The plan was locked.
"Dismissed," Aerion ordered.
As the command staff filed out of the tent to relay the orders to the Quaestors, Aerion turned to J'zargo, Onmund, Brelyna, and Eirik.
"Come with me," Aerion instructed. "We have men to put back together."
Aerion led his four magical apprentices out into the freezing wind, walking purposefully toward the large and illuminated medical tents situated near the center of the camp.
Inside the triage tents, the smell of copper, sweat, and herbal poultices was overwhelming. The forty men with minor injuries were sitting on cots, having their wounds bound by the field medics, while the twelve critically injured legionnaires lay pale and groaning on bloody stretchers.
The moment Aerion stepped into the tent, a hushed silence fell over the wounded.
"Captain," a young medic saluted nervously, his hands covered in blood. "We've stabilized the worst of them, but Tribune Maro here has a punctured lung, and another has a shattered collarbone. They won't make it through the night without a temple priest."
"They will not need a priest," Aerion said softly.
He walked over to the cot where the Tribune was gasping for shallow, agonizing breaths. Aerion removed his gauntlets, handing them to Eisa.
He placed his bare hands directly over the man's bloody chest. He didn't use a standard, localized healing spell. Aerion tapped into his legendary Restoration mastery. A blinding, pure golden light erupted from his palms, washing entirely over the dying man.
The results were instantaneous and miraculous. The ragged, torn flesh of the chest wound actively knit itself back together in a matter of seconds. The shattered ribs realigned with soft, sickening pops, fusing into solid bone. The punctured lung sealed, and the legionnaire took a massive, deep, completely unobstructed breath, his eyes flying open in sheer shock.
"By the Eight..." the man whispered, staring up at Aerion as if looking at a god.
Aerion moved methodically down the line of the critically injured. He didn't just heal them, he instructed his apprentices as he worked. He had Brelyna and J'zargo mirror his magical frequencies, allowing them to channel their own Healing Hands into the men with shattered collarbones and deep lacerations, aggressively pushing their practical application of Restoration magic.
Within thirty minutes, the twelve men who were supposed to die before dawn were sitting up, perfectly healthy, staring at their unblemished skin in profound disbelief.
Aerion then spent the next hour walking the perimeter of the camp. He visited the watch fires, speaking directly with the freezing legionnaires. He praised their unbreakable shield wall, asked them about their families in Cyrodiil and Falkreath, and promised them a total victory.
The morale of the regiment, already sky high from the successful breach, absolutely skyrocketed. To have a supreme commander who fought in the vanguard, possessed godlike magic, and personally healed the dying filled the men with a fanatical, unbreakable loyalty.
When his rounds were complete, Aerion walked to the absolute center of the encampment.
Praefect Quintus and the new Tribunes were watching him closely from the command tent, wondering how exactly he planned to fortify an entire basin in the dead of night.
Aerion closed his eyes. He connected deeply with the Eye of Magnus, pulling a staggering, unfathomable volume of Magicka into his core. The air around him shimmered, the ambient temperature plummeting so violently that the moisture in the air instantly crystallized into falling snow.
He raised both of his hands high above his head and slammed them down toward the frozen earth.
He didn't cast a simple wall. He cast a sustained area effect cataclysm of Frost magic that he just visualized and created.
A roaring, expanding shockwave of absolute zero tore outward from his position, racing toward the perimeter of the camp. The ground violently groaned and cracked. From the frozen dirt along the edges of the basin, massive, thick sheets of jagged permafrost erupted upward.
The ice grew with terrifying speed, stacking upon itself, fusing into a sheer, impenetrable, thirty foot high glacial wall that entirely encircled the sprawling Imperial encampment.
Aerion precisely manipulated the magic, leaving a wide, deliberate gap on the southern edge for a heavily fortified entrance, and sculpting massive, sloping staircases of solid ice along the interior walls so the legionnaires could easily ascend the ramparts and take up defensive firing positions.
The entire process took less than a minute. When Aerion finally severed the magical flow and lowered his hands, the camp was completely sealed within a breathtaking, indestructible fortress of glowing blue ice.
Absolute, stunned silence gripped the one thousand men.
Praefect Quintus dropped his heavy iron flagon. It clattered against the frozen dirt, the spiced wine spilling uselessly. The veteran officer stared at the towering ice walls, his mind utterly failing to comprehend the scale of power he had just witnessed. The new Tribunes looked equally horrified and awed, finally understanding exactly why Praefect Valerius had told them to simply "believe and see."
Aerion, standing in the center of the camp, suddenly let his shoulders slump. He swayed slightly on his feet, letting out a heavy, ragged sigh, playing his role flawlessly.
"Master!" Onmund gasped, immediately rushing forward with Brelyna.
Lydia and Jenassa were there in an instant. They caught Aerion by the arms, supporting his massive weight, projecting the image of a mage who had pushed his core to the absolute, dangerous breaking point to secure their safety.
"I am fine," Aerion murmured, his voice appropriately strained and exhausted. "Just... get me to my tent."
Supported by his apprentices and his retainers, Aerion heavily limped his way back to his private command pavilion, the legionnaires parting respectfully, whispering prayers of gratitude as he passed.
The moment the heavy canvas flaps of his tent closed, sealing him inside the dim, private interior, the exhaustion vanished entirely.
Aerion instantly straightened his spine. He rolled his shoulders, his breathing perfectly calm, his vast Magicka reserves completely untouched.
He stripped out of his heavy armor, lying down on the thick fur bedroll, and fell into a deep, dreamless rest, entirely unbothered by the freezing wind howling uselessly against his glacial walls.
The next morning, the sun rose over a world painted in pristine, bloodless white. The storm had broken during the night, leaving the plateau buried in knee deep powder, the sky above a hard, brilliant blue.
Aerion emerged from his tent, projecting an aura of complete, miraculous recovery. He breathed in the freezing morning air, his golden eyes bright.
He walked directly to the main command tent, where his retainers were already waiting alongside Praefects Valerius and Quintus.
"Report," Aerion commanded briskly, stepping up to the table.
"The men are fed, armed, and formed up, Captain," Valerius stated, his eyes shining with anticipation. "No Stormcloak patrols approached the ice walls during the night. The regiment is entirely ready for the assault."
Aerion offered a cold, satisfied smile. "Then let us begin the end."
He reached down to his belt, unhooking the jagged, bronze mask of Krosis. With a smooth, practiced motion, he pulled the heavy metal over his face. The transformation was instant. He was no longer just an Imperial officer, he was a walking nightmare of the magic world.
Aerion led his command staff out of the tent and walked toward the southern gap in the ice wall.
Outside the glacial fortress, the eleven armored mammoths were waiting, their breath pluming in the freezing air, their custom forged steel plates gleaming in the harsh morning sun. Behind them, the one thousand Imperial legionnaires were already locked into formation. They had followed Aerion's explicit orders perfectly, forming two massive, unbroken, terrifyingly wide lines of heavy infantry, their rectangular shields overlapping in a flawless wall of crimson and steel.
Aerion walked up to the alpha mammoth. He grabbed the thick leather harnessing and hauled himself up onto the beast's skull, standing tall behind the iron tusk guards.
Lydia, Jenassa, Eisa, and the four apprentices took up their designated positions directly behind the mammoth herd, shielded by the massive beasts, ready to provide surgical support.
Aerion looked down at the waiting army.
"MARCH!" Aerion's voice thundered across the snowy plateau.
The alpha mammoth let out a deafening trumpet, and the column began to move. The earth shook beneath the synchronized, rhythmic thud of one thousand heavy boots and forty four massive, steel plated feet.
As they crested the ridge and brought Fort Kastav into view, it was immediately clear that the Stormcloaks had not wasted the night.
The ruined breach in the southern curtain wall had been heavily barricaded with shattered timber, overturned carts, and hastily erected spikes. Behind the breach, thousands of Stormcloak soldiers were massed in the interior courtyard, their heavy shields locked together, their spears pointing outward like a massive, bristling hedgehog.
Atop the surviving corner towers, hundreds of Stormcloak archers had their bows drawn, nocking heavy, jagged bone arrows, their eyes locked on the approaching Imperial vanguard.
"They're on high alert!" Praefect Quintus shouted from the rear of the phalanx.
"Let them be," Aerion murmured beneath his mask.
When the mammoth herd closed to within two hundred yards of the breach, the Stormcloak commanders screamed their orders.
"LOOSE!"
The sky instantly darkened. A massive, terrifying volley of thousands of arrows arched high into the freezing air, descending like a deadly, whistling rain of steel and bone directly toward the Imperial lines.
Aerion did not command his men to raise their shields. He didn't need to.
He raised both of his hands, tapping deeply into the infinite reservoir of the Eye of Magnus. He unleashed a dual casted concentrated wave of Frostbite directly into the sky above the entire army.
The magic didn't just chill the air, it instantly froze the moisture in the clouds, creating a massive, localized dome of absolute zero directly in the path of the descending arrows.
As the thousands of arrows hit the magical dome, their kinetic energy was instantly, violently halted. The wooden shafts froze solid, the steel tips snapping under the extreme thermal shock. The entire volley shattered in mid air, raining down upon the snow and the mammoth armor as nothing more than harmless, broken splinters of frozen wood.
The Stormcloak archers on the towers stared in absolute, paralyzing horror. Their ultimate defense had been casually swatted out of the sky.
"BREAK THEM!" Aerion roared.
He sent a surge of absolute, primal bloodlust through his Animal Affinity.
The eleven armored mammoths dropped their massive heads and broke into a terrifying, earth shattering charge. They covered the remaining distance in seconds, hitting the makeshift timber barricades blocking the breach with the kinetic force of an avalanche.
The heavy carts and sharpened logs instantly exploded into shrapnel.
The alpha mammoth plunged directly through the ruined breach, its iron capped tusks driving straight into the massive, packed Stormcloak shield wall waiting in the courtyard.
The slaughter was instantaneous and brutally explicit.
The heavy iron shields of the Stormcloak vanguard crumpled like parchment. Dozens of men were violently launched backward into their own comrades, their ribs shattered, their chests caved in by the sheer, unstoppable mass of the beast. The alpha let out a deafening roar, rearing up on its hind legs before bringing its massive, steel plated front feet down directly onto the dense cluster of spearmen, crushing them into the bloody cobblestones with a sickening, wet crunch.
The other ten mammoths poured through the breach behind the alpha, spreading out into the courtyard like a tidal wave of living siege weaponry. They gored, they trampled, and they swung their massive trunks, hurling hardened Stormcloak veterans through the air to smash violently against the stone walls of the keep.
The Stormcloak formation instantly collapsed into absolute, screaming chaos.
"HOLD THE LINE! ADVANCE!" Praefect Valerius roared over the din.
The one thousand Imperial legionnaires did exactly as commanded. They did not break into a wild charge. They marched through the shattered breach in two perfect, disciplined lines. The front rank held their heavy shields locked tight, presenting an impenetrable wall of steel, while the second rank hack and trust their weapons over the shoulders of the men in front.
They moved into the bloody, chaotic courtyard like a slow moving, grinding executioner's blade.
Any Stormcloak soldier who managed to dodge the rampaging mammoths and attempted to counter attack was met by the unified, ruthless efficiency of the Imperial phalanx. Weapons lashed out with mechanical precision, piercing throats and stomachs, while the heavy shields battered back any desperate axe swings.
Aerion stood untouched atop the alpha mammoth, an absolute god of the battlefield.
While his left hand continuously bathed the mammoth herd in the golden, restorative light of Grand Healing, ensuring their flesh instantly knit back together whenever a desperate Stormcloak blade found a gap in the armor, his right hand became an instrument of targeted annihilation.
He did not use massive area of effect spells that might risk his own closely packed legionnaires. He used surgical precision.
He hurled Incinerate blasts directly into the remaining archer towers. The blinding white plasma struck the wooden platforms, instantly vaporizing the stone supports and the archers standing on them. Burning bodies plummeted from the sky, crashing into the chaotic melee below. He cast narrow, jagged arcs of Chain Lightning that snaked through the tightest clusters of Stormcloak heavy infantry attempting to regroup near the keep doors, electrocuting dozens of men simultaneously, their armor acting as a fatal conductor.
The courtyard of Fort Kastav was no longer a battlefield, it was an enclosed, inescapable meat grinder of blood, frozen mud, and shattered bone. The air was thick with the smell of ozone, burning wood, and the deafening screams of dying rebels.
But the Stormcloak garrison was massive, and from the deep, dark interior of the fortress barracks, hundreds more heavily armored veterans were pouring out to join the slaughter, their faces twisted in fanatical, suicidal fury.
The front of Fort Kastav had descended into a level of apocalyptic violence that defied military comprehension. It was no longer a battlefield, it was a claustrophobic and deafening meat grinder of frozen mud, shattered bone, and screaming steel.
The heavy iron portcullis of the fortress remained jammed open, its winch destroyed by the initial magical bombardment. Through this fatal funnel, the Stormcloak command continued to pour hundreds of hardened reserves from the deep interior barracks.
They charged out into the freezing air with fanatical, suicidal fury, their battleaxes raised, screaming oaths to Talos as they threw themselves against the impenetrable, crimson cloaked wall of the Imperial phalanx.
But the Imperial line did not break. The one thousand legionnaires, anchored by the flawless discipline instilled by Praefects Valerius and Quintus, operated as a single, unyielding organism. They held their heavy rectangular shields in a perfect, interlocking testudo, mechanically thrusting their short spears forward to pierce the throats and bellies of the charging rebels.
At the violent epicenter of the battle, Aerion stood untouched atop the skull of the alpha mammoth, conducting a symphony of slaughter.
He looked past the immediate melee, his golden eyes locking onto the dark, gaping archways of the fortress interior. He could see the flash of torches and hear the thunderous boots of hundreds more Stormcloak reinforcements rushing up from the cellars. If they were allowed to continually flood the courtyard, sheer numerical attrition would eventually begin to exhaust his legionnaires, regardless of their discipline.
Aerion decided to completely sever their reinforcements.
He did not cast a destructive spell. Instead, he reached out with both hands, tapping into the boundless, infinite singularity of the Eye of Magnus. He visualized the stone corridors, the crowded armories, and the winding stairwells inside the keep. He tore open the dimensional veil separating Nirn from the chaotic, swirling void of Oblivion.
Forty spatial rifts violently tore open, not in the sky above the courtyard, but directly inside the halls of Fort Kastav.
Forty Daedric Atronachs materialized in the absolute center of the Stormcloak reserves.
The sudden, muffled screams echoing from deep within the stone fortress were blood chilling. Flame Atronachs hovered through the narrow corridors, hurling spiraling pillars of superheated fire that instantly incinerated tightly packed squads of men. Frost Atronachs blocked the stairwells, their massive, jagged ice fists crushing skulls against the stone. Storm Atronachs turned the interior armories into strobe lit execution chambers, their chain lightning arcing through the heavy chainmail of the trapped rebels.
The Stormcloaks were now fighting a horrifying, two-front war. They were being slaughtered by demons inside their own home, and they were being crushed by immortal beasts on the outside.
From a high, surviving stone balcony overlooking the courtyard, the Stormcloak Fortress Commander stared down at the carnage in absolute, paralyzing despair. His garrison was evaporating. He looked at the towering High Elf wearing the bronze mask of a Dragon Priest, standing calmly atop the alpha mammoth.
The Commander understood the brutal reality of the siege. If the Elf lived, Kastav fell.
"KILL THE MAGE!" the Commander shrieked, his voice cracking with desperation, pointing his sword directly at Aerion. "ALL ARCHERS! FOCUS ON THE ELF! BERSERKERS, BRING DOWN THAT BEAST!"
Dozens of Stormcloak archers on the remaining walls pivoted, drawing their bows and unleashing a concentrated, desperate volley of steel tipped arrows directly at Aerion's exposed position. At the same time, a massive squad of two handed berserkers broke away from the Imperial phalanx, screaming as they charged blindly toward the alpha mammoth, intent on hamstringing the beast.
Aerion didn't even flinch.
As the dense cloud of arrows arched through the freezing air toward him, Aerion simply raised his left hand. A shimmering Ward snapped into existence, powered by the Eye of Magnus. It didn't just block the arrows, the magical kinetic repulsion was so intense that the heavy wooden shafts instantly shattered into splinters upon impact, raining down harmlessly over the mammoth's thick fur.
The charging berserkers met an equally brutal end. Aerion didn't waste magicka on them. He simply sent a pulse of primal aggression through his Animal Affinity.
The alpha mammoth swung its massive, heavy trunk like a siege battering ram, smashing into the vanguard of the berserkers. The sheer kinetic impact shattered ribs and threw three men thirty feet across the courtyard to crash violently against the stone walls. The beast then reared up, bringing its steel plated front feet down in a crushing, earth shaking stomp that instantly pulverized the remaining charging rebels into the bloody mud.
The Stormcloak Commander collapsed to his knees on the balcony, dropping his sword. They couldn't shoot him. They couldn't get near him. They were being systematically erased from the earth.
But as the siege raged on, the heavy, metallic stench of spilled blood and the massive, unnatural surges of Daedric and elemental magic radiating from the fort reached a critical threshold.
A sound echoed through the jagged peaks of the Winterhold mountains.
It was a sound that instantly froze the blood in the veins of every mortal standing upon the plateau. It cut through the clash of steel, the roaring of the fires, and the screams of the dying.
ROOOOOAAARRRRR!
The guttural, bone shaking bellow vibrated through the ancient stones of Fort Kastav, rattling the heavy shields of the Imperial legionnaires.
Aerion's head snapped up, his golden eyes tracking the sound toward the eastern, snow capped ridges.
"HALT THE ADVANCE!" Aerion's magically amplified voice thundered over the courtyard, cutting through the chaos of battle. "HOLD YOUR GROUND! SHIELDS UP! DO NOT BREAK RANK!"
Praefects Valerius and Quintus immediately barked the orders, their voices tight with sudden dread. The Imperial phalanx ground to a halt, the legionnaires locking their shields tighter, their knuckles white as they peered into the gray, snow filled sky.
Aerion immediately commanded the eleven armored mammoths to form a wide, defensive ring in front of the Imperial vanguard, creating a massive wall of living steel and ivory to prevent the desperate Stormcloaks from exploiting the sudden halt.
From the swirling blizzard above the eastern peaks, a massive, terrifying shape materialized.
It was a colossal dragon, its scales the color of rusted iron and dried blood, its leathery wings beating the freezing air with the concussive force of a hurricane. It had smelled the massive slaughter, and it had come to claim the feast.
The dragon did not circle or assess the armies. It folded its massive wings and entered a sheer, terrifying dive directly toward the crowded, bloody courtyard of the fortress.
As it plummeted, its massive jaws unhinged, a blinding, superheated orange light building rapidly in the back of its throat.
"BRACE!" Aerion roared.
Aerion reached deep into the Eye of Magnus, drawing an impossible, staggering volume of Magicka into his core. He threw both of his hands upward, his palms glowing with a blinding blue light.
He cast Greater Ward, but he didn't just protect his own body. He expanded the magical barrier exponentially, forcing the shimmering, translucent dome of kinetic energy to stretch over the entire front line of the mammoth herd and the tightly packed Imperial vanguard behind them.
The dragon pulled up sharply from its dive, unleashing a roaring, torrential river of superheated fire directly over the courtyard.
The apocalyptic fire breath crashed down upon the battlefield.
When the flames hit Aerion's massively expanded Greater Ward, the magical barrier flared with blinding intensity. The superheated fire washed over the dome like a violent river hitting a boulder, parting seamlessly around the Imperial forces and splashing harmlessly into the snow on either side. Beneath the ward, the legionnaires could feel the terrifying, radiant heat baking the air, but the fire did not touch a single crimson cloak.
The Stormcloaks were not so fortunate.
The dragon's breath, deflected by the ward, washed entirely over the unprotected rebel lines massed near the keep's entrance. The result was instantaneous and horrific. Hundreds of Stormcloak soldiers were caught in the inferno.
Their cheap iron armor superheated in seconds, melting directly into their skin. The snow instantly flashed into scalding steam. The agonizing, bubbling screams of the burning rebels echoed across the plateau as they collapsed into the mud, their bodies reduced to blackened, smoking husks in a matter of seconds.
The dragon, infuriated that its breath had been repelled by a magical barrier, banked sharply into the sky. It beat its massive wings, hovering heavily above the burning courtyard, looking down at the towering High Elf standing atop the mammoth. The beast opened its jaws again, but this time, it did not breathe fire. It roared a sequence of harsh, guttural, rhythmic syllables that echoed like thunderclaps. To the Imperial legionnaires and the surviving Stormcloaks, it sounded like the mindless, terrifying roar of a monster.
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[Main Panel]
Name: Aerion
Race: High Elf (Altmer)
Health: 1030/1030
Stamina: 1070/1070
Magicka: 980/980 [External Capacity & Regeneration: ∞]
Level: 267
Skills: Animal Affinity (MAX LEVEL), Fast Skill Levelling (MAX LEVEL), Fast Magic Mastery (MAX LEVEL), Instant Shout (MAX LEVEL), Dragon Master (MAX LEVEL), Eye Of Magnus (MAX LEVEL), Summon Dragon (MAX LEVEL), Destruction (Fire(+7)/Lightning(+5)/Frost(+4)) (Level 0/0/0), Restoration (Healing(+4)/Purify(+2)) (Level 0/98), Alteration (Level 43), Illusion (Level 62), Conjuration (Necromancy/Summoning(+3)) (Level 37/0), Persuasion(+3) (Level 92), Smithing(+1) (Level 79), Sneak(+1) (Level 64), One Handed(+2) (Level 0), Two Handed(+1) (Level 29), Lockpicking (Level 55), Archery(+1) (Level 0), Enchanting(+1) (Level 23), Light Armor(+2) (Level 42), Block (Level 70), Pickpocket (Level 8), & Heavy Armor(+2) (Level 0)
Shouts: Fus Roh Dah (Force Balance Push), Tiid (Time), Krii (Kill), Feim Zii Gron (Fade Spirit Bind), Su (Air), Laas (Life), Yol Toor (Fire Inferno), Kaan (Kyne), Zul Mey Gut (Voice Fool Far), IIZ (Ice), & Faas (Fear)
[Inventory Panel]
1x Small Sack, Poacher's Axe, the Golden Claw, Arvel's Journal, Inkwell & Quill, Thief Book, Parchment Rolls Of Mammoths Farm And Loan, Ebony Claw, The Mirror, Ring of Pure Mixtures, Grand Soul Gem (Filled), Deed to Tundra Homestead, Dawnbreaker, Traveling Backpack (Supplies), Vampire Armor, Vampire Boots, Movarth's Golden Ash (Unique), Potion of Healing, Mage Boots Of Weight, Master Robes Of Destruction, Staff of Jyrik Gauldurson, Gauldur Black Bow, Dwarven Battleaxe, Mehrunes Razor Hilt, Mehrunes' Razor Pommel, Stone of Barenziah (1/24), Mehrunes' Razor Blades, Iron Circlet of Ruby, & Iron Circlet of Emerald
2x Common Soul Gem (Empty), Black Soul Gem (Empty), & Potions of Plentiful Magicka
3x Potions of Minor Stamina, Petty Soul Gem (Filled), Potions of Minor Magicka, Grand Soul Gem (Filled), & Greater Soul Gems
5x Mod Chests
8x Iron Arrows, Ancient Nord Arrows, & Common Soul Gem (Filled)
9x Potions Of Minor Healing
10x Lesser Soul Gems
12x Black Soul Gem (Filled)
Weight: 49.79 KG / 885 KG
Septims: 255,867